The present invention generally relates to graphic output of text, and more particularly relates to typographic glyph construction of a user""s input text within a computer system.
Current computer systems provide individuals with opportunities to produce documents of professional quality, such as with desktop publishing software and graphics software programs. The ability to manipulate the appearance of the text within these programs is vital in allowing users greater flexibility and creativity in document production. Included in these manipulations are changes in fonts, justification, size, and other aspects of the appearance, such as bolding and italicizing.
Although most programs can perform manipulations with some level of success, each program has a limitation in its range of manipulations due to design considerations. Some programs, such as QuickDraw GX from Apple Computer, Cupertino, Calif., provide more sophistication and enhanced capabilities than other programs to allow more choices for users. Unfortunately, these enhanced capabilities are normally not transferable to other programs. Thus, attempts to incorporate such capabilities, such as different fonts, from one program into another are also usually quite limited and typically unsuccessful.
Accordingly, a need exists for a flexible and portable system that allows accurate and efficient manipulations of textual data in a graphics system. The present invention addresses such a need.
The present invention provides a method and system for providing multiple typographic glyph data items to a requesting client from a font scaler sub-system. The method and system includes accepting a request from the client that describes multiple glyphs and a destination memory in which to store the glyphs. From the request, a transaction message is formed and transmitted to a scaler server using an application program interface. The scaler server then generates the multiple glyph data items from the descriptions of the glyphs, and stores the glyph data items directly into the destination memory.
According to the system and method disclosed herein, the present invention amortizes set-up operations over the number of glyphs in the request, which reduces overhead and increases overall system performance. Further, the present invention eliminates the need for two copies of each glyph generated to exist simultaneously, which conserves system resources.